I stood for several minutes listening to his step, tracing

it through the hall below-as far as my knowledge

of the house would permit. Then, in unknown regions,

I could hear the closing of doors and drawing of bolts.

Verily, my jailer was a person of painstaking habits.

I opened my traveling-case and distributed its contents

on the dressing-table. I had carried through all

my adventures a folding leather photograph-holder, containing

portraits of my father and mother and of John

Marshall Glenarm, my grandfather, and this I set up

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on the mantel in the little sitting-room. I felt to-night

as never before how alone I was in the world, and a

need for companionship and sympathy stirred in me.

It was with a new and curious interest that I peered

into my grandfather's shrewd old eyes. He used to come

and go fitfully at my father's house; but my father had

displeased him in various ways that I need not recite,

and my father's death had left me with an estrangement

which I had widened by my own acts.

Now that I had reached Glenarm, my mind reverted

to Pickering's estimate of the value of my grandfather's

estate. Although John Marshall Glenarm was an eccentric

man, he had been able to accumulate a large fortune;

and yet I had allowed the executor to tell me that

he had died comparatively poor. In so readily accepting

the terms of the will and burying myself in a region of

which I knew nothing, I had cut myself off from the

usual channels of counsel. If I left the place to return

to New York I should simply disinherit myself. At

Glenarm I was, and there I must remain to the end of

the year; I grew bitter against Pickering as I reflected

upon the ease with which he had got rid of me. I had

always satisfied myself that my wits were as keen as his,

but I wondered now whether I had not stupidly put myself

in his power.




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